A recent dip in female-led theatrical releases in the UK - back to 2018 levels of 26% reminds us that our work is far from over; that we cannot be complacent.
Below you can read about the research we conduct into gender representation in film and the wider industry, tracking the release landscape to present an accurate picture of investment in films by filmmakers of marginalised genders.
Here you can also find out about news and opportunities at Reclaim The Frame, along with curated film recommendations, filmmaker interviews, and creative responses.
Updated: May 10, 2023
We’re proud to reveal the titles featured in our Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2022 guest programme SHE WEAVES A DREAM, brought to you by Reclaim The Frame x International ✨ November 5th.
SHE WEAVES A DREAM explores finding freedom in creativity, expression and dream worlds, each lensed by artists and filmmakers based in the South West Asian and North African region. Across beautiful animation, lyrical documentary in Super16, absurd comedy, fantastical drama and feminist twists, each of our characters finds liberation through imagination.
Up to the Sea She Weaves a Dream by Maryam Khalilzadeh (Iran 2021) – UK premiere
From the kitchen table to the bottom of the ocean, three generations of women express their shared grief in the aftermath of war by weaving their memories and dreams.
Love in Galilee by Layla Menhem & Nader Chalhoub (Lebanon 2021) – UK premiere
Pressured into an arranged marriage, Faten becomes disillusioned by notions of love and tradition. On returning to her hometown in South Lebanon, a newfound outlook opens her up to a freedom that transcends societal expectations.
Turkish Gothic: Portrait of a Family by Burcu Uğuz (Turkey 2020) – UK premiere
An artist is commissioned to paint the portrait of a stiff, upper-class family. Through his artistic impression, the couple are confronted by the ways constructed notions of class, gender and family have influenced their inner dynamics.
Become / Bint Werden by Maysaa Almumin (Kuwait 2020) – UK premiere
Depressed and desperate for meaningful connection, a lonely office worker finds solace in a dying cockroach. This absurd companionship takes a dark turn as she struggles to find a grip on her life.
I and the Stupid Boy by Kaouther Ben Haia (Tunisia 2022)
On the way to her hot date, Nora is startled by her manipulative ex Kevin. His sexist taunts give way to a tense chase through an abandoned building, but the tables turn when Nora regains power.
Warsha by Dania Bdeir (Lebanon 2022)
Mohammed, a lonesome Syrian migrant, daringly volunteers to work on one of the most dangerous cranes in Beirut. At a soaring feat, and safe from peering eyes, he finds the freedom to express his true inner self.
Find tickets Here.
This selection has been curated with programmers at Flying Broom Women’s Film Festival in Turkey, Beirut International Women Film Festival in Lebanon, and Regards de femmes: festival international de film de femmes in Tunisia, as part of a collective mission to bring a broader perspective of the world through cinema and to champion films by women & non-binary filmmakers.
Reclaim The Frame x International is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects. The screening is also supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery. More about Reclaim The Frame International
Updated: May 10, 2023
In a suburban house in Finland – where the walls are draped in garish, oppressively floral wallpaper, the glass surfaces shine a little too bright, and a dad with a knit vest tied around his neck trims the garden hedges – there’s a monster in the closet.
Like a large, awkward, and very slimy bird-velociraptor-skeleton, it sheds goopy feathers and grows stringy hairs from its prehistoric-looking cranium. It’s got big, big eyes, well-suited for inducing Jurassic Park-esque jump scares, but also for staring deep into your own. It’s in the closet because it has to be, of course; in this house, which looks more like a dollhouse that’s been hit with a supersize beam than something truly meant for humans, there’s no room for ugly, gooey things. So twelve-year-old Tinja (a bright-eyed Siiri Solalinna) hides the monster away.
In Hanna Bergholm’s debut feature, Hatching, the horrors of growing up find physical manifestation in a strange egg, taken home by a young girl and nursed in the stuffing-filled belly of her pink teddy bear until it’s the size of a mini-fridge. When we first meet Tinja, she’s stretching in the living room in a leotard, and the bones of her vertebrae seem to poke through her skin as she contorts her body into shape. A competitive young gymnast feeling the pressure of her tight-lipped, preternaturally smiley mother’s high expectations (Sophia Heikkilä), Tinja rarely has space to feel anything at all – her blogger-slash-social media influencer mother, who films everything with a selfie stick, responds to Tinja’s anxieties about an upcoming gymnastics competition with a placid, dismissively beaming grin. She says to her daughter: “The best way to deal with stress? Win.”
When the film opens with a sharply cawing black crow hurtling its way into this family’s eerily picture-perfect living room, it’s clear that some fowl play (apologies, it had to be done) is about to shatter their ‘nuclear-family-postcard-material’ image of suburban contentedness.
As the injured bird frantically smashes into bits of glass mantelpiece decor, the tinkling chandelier, and other translucent, too-fragile things, we see in Tinja’s wide eyes perhaps her first ever experience of chaos in what must have been a painstakingly curated and controlled childhood. Before the crow rips the whole dollhouse apart, however, Tinja’s mother snaps the bird’s neck between her finely manicured, glittery pink talons, and tells her daughter to dispose of the corpse with the “organic waste” out back. (Whatever you may say about her, at least she’s responsible with the bins.) But the crow’s pained caws continue to reach Tinja’s ears, and she ventures out at night to put it out of its misery. Splattered with its juices and blood – it’s now 100% dead, if it wasn’t before – she finds an egg on the forest floor. Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s some nascent nurturing instinct, gained from twelve years of failing to solicit true affection from a too-cold mother – but she feels compelled to bring it home, and nestle it amongst her pillows and stuffed animals as she goes to sleep.
When Tinja eventually finds mama making out with the handyman, and her perpetually sweater-vested father all but meekly shrugs at his wife’s infidelity, she’s at an utter loss to understand how she feels. But this egg in her bedroom, rapidly growing in size, seems to call to her; she embraces it, and her tears fall onto its shell as she weeps. Her emotions in liquified form seep into this strange egg’s membrane – and this is what awakens the creature inside it, clamouring to hatch. It also activates a psychic and physical bond between this young girl and her adopted young bird-monster. When Tinja’s uptight, hyper-controlled life scarcely allows her to even react to her mother’s affair, the monster seems to wreak commensurate havoc to compensate – and the poor neighbour’s bulldog, for example, meets an unsightly end.
A visually arresting, incredibly memorable work of animatronics brought to life by five puppeteers, Hatching’s sticky little creature is a real cinematic marvel: one that feels rare to see on our CGI-saturated screens nowadays. Its spellbinding physical presence – all bone and slime, matted feathers and wet, viscous slobber – captures the rare, dreamy, fairytale-turned-nightmare feel of old children’s books. The film finds a potent visual language in the contrast between its idyllic dollhouse setting, painted in lurid, artificial sunlight, and the squelchy, gloopy mucous that drenches the creature whenever we see it endearingly skulking around dark corners, like it can’t help that it’s mildly terrifying.
Confidently teetering between an earnest goofiness and the nail-biting fear of what truly lies waiting for us as kids in the dark, Hatching is an organic take on the well-worn tropes of coming-of-age and “monstrous girls” seeking to break free. It’s a familiar narrative, but nevertheless a delightfully entertaining and spooky bedtime story spun from the eternally fertile (and eternally fraught) yarn of mothers and daughters needing to be loved. A good egg, indeed.
Where to Watch:
Hatching, a Picturehouse Entertainment release, is exclusively in cinemas Friday 16th September. See where it’s showing near you at https://hatching.film
Accessibility Info:
The film will screen at select shows with descriptive subtitles – sometimes referred to as SDH (subtitles for Deaf and hard-of-hearing), HoH (hard-of-hearing), and captions. Descriptive subtitles transcribe dialogue (e.g. for English-speaking audiences, both English and any other languages) and relevant aspects of the soundtrack, including music and sound effects, attempting to give viewers an equal experience to those who are able to watch films without descriptive subtitles. Descriptive subtitles include speech identifiers and descriptive elements such as [door slamming] and [kettle whistling].
About the Author:
Xuanlin Tham (they/them)
Xuanlin is a Singaporean film critic and curator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They are passionate about queer, ecofeminist, and more-than-human perspectives in cinema which demand us to forge new solidarities and imagine ways of being in the world differently.
Xuanlin joined the Birds’ Eye View team in June this year as our regional Impact Producer, championing Reclaim the Frame events and films in Glasgow/Edinburgh – contributing to the programming, hosting events, and building audiences.
Twitter @xuanlintham
Updated: May 10, 2023
Birds’ Eye View (UK), Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival (Turkey), Regards de Femmes International Film Festival (Tunisia) & Women Make Waves International Film Festival (Taiwan) we’re thrilled to announce the FILMONOMICS training programme participants as part of RECLAIM THE FRAME X INTERNATIONAL.
Following an open and globally circulated call for applications, the consortia behind the Reclaim The Frame x International project are today proud to reveal the writers, directors and producers selected as part of our 2022-2023 Filmonomics training programme which will run online from September 2022 through to International Women’s Day in March 2023.
Launched on International Women’s Day in March 2022, Reclaim the Frame x International aims to to support culturally diverse women & non-binary filmmakers based across Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, Taiwan and the UK through the circulation of works, and through a professional development programme: Filmonomics.
Together, we aim to create a network which advocates for, and builds audiences for, films by women & non-binary creatives as part of our shared mission for gender diversity and inclusion in cinema – learning from each other along the way.
The bespoke programme (Film + Economics) is a business-training programme which balances creative and commercial aspects of filmmaking and production.
Announcing the selected participants (pictured L-R)
Aephie Chen, UK, Writer/Director. Aycan Aluçlu, Turkey, Producer. Belkıs Bayrak, Turkey, Writer/Director/Producer. Burcak Dilekli, Turkey, Writer/Director/Producer. Cemre Yilmaz, Turkey, Writer/Director/Producer. Chia-Hsuan Tan, Taiwan. Writer/Director/Producer. Derya Durmaz, Germany, Writer/Director/Producer. Hala El Kouch, Lebanon, Writer/Director/Producer. Emna Mrabet, France, Writer/Director. H. Işık, Turkey, Writer/Director. Marie-Rose Osta, Lebanon. Writer/Director. Merve Bozcu, Turkey, Writer/Director/Producer. J Triangular, Taiwan, Writer/Director. Safa Ghali, Tunisia, Writer/Director/Producer. Sana Jaziri, Tunisia, Writer/Director. Sheng Ting Shen, US, Director. Sis Gurdal, Spain, Writer/Director/Producer. Yara Lahoud, Lebanon, Writer/Director.
The course will be led by: Melanie Iredale (Birds’ Eye View Director) and Simone Glover (Birds’ Eye View Training Manager), with input from Isra Al Kassi (Birds’ Eye View Head of Programmes and Development), Azza Jedidi & Manel Souissi (Regards de Femmes), Fatma Edemen & Nil Kural (Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival), Huei-Yin-Chen & Yi Chou (Women Make Waves International Film Festival)
Speakers and coaches will include
Amy Ma (CEO & producer MA Studios, Director THE GREATER GOOD, THE AMERICAN GIRL, US/UK/Taiwan), Anna Seifert-Speck (Script and story consultant, UK), Annette Corbett (coach, UK), Azra Deniz Okyay (Director/writer GHOSTS, Turkey), Carmen Gray (film critic/arts journalist/ programmer at Berlinale, Germany), Edima Otuokon (Ladima Foundation, Nigeria) Gülengül Altıntaş (Script consultant and trainer, Turkey), Isona Admetlla (Fund Co-ordinator at World Cinema Fund Germany), Kate Leys (Script & Story Editor, UK), Khalil Benkirane, (Head of Grant at Doha Film Institute, Qatar), Lucila Moctezuma (Program Director at Chicken & Egg, US), Lucy Jones (Executive Director at Comscore, UK), Margje de Koning (Artistic Director at Movies That Matter, Netherlands), Dr Maxa Zoller (Artistic Director at Frauen Film Festival, Germany), Paul Sng (Co-director, POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHE, UK), Sonali Joshi (Founder & Director, Day for Night, UK), Viktorija Cook (Acquisitions Consultant Film Republic, UK).
Our Director Melanie Iredale said: “On behalf of the partners, we’re excited to announce the latest Filmonomics cohort as part of our Reclaim The Frame x International project, each incredibly talented individual will bring a range of visions and experiences as they develop what stood out to the consortia as compelling feature film projects. They’re on a journey we feel privileged to share and champion over the next eight months, bringing the group together from Lebanon, Taiwan, Turkey, Tunisia and beyond for International peer-to-peer learning and support, and to introduce them to a stellar line up of coaches and speakers from around the world”.
Aephie Chen: is an interdisciplinary filmmaker, artist, curator working across Taiwan, UK and Iceland. She has lived in twenty-nine countries and the stories she explores often re-imagine identities, narrating relationships in a contemporary multicultural society.
Aycan Aluçlu: After completing her bachelor’s degree at the Department of Economics, she started to work in the production and coordination departments of Nar Film. She has been involved in production, project development, and funding on freelance projects. Aluçlu is an alumna of Sarajevo Talents 2019. She is producing her cinema projects under the roof of her company, Surrealland.
Belkıs Bayrak: is a filmmaker who received her MA degree in Film and Television from Istanbul Bilgi University in 2019. She made two short films The Apartment (2018) and Cemile (2021). She founded Saba Film in 2020.
Burcak Dilekli: Born in Turkey, she graduated from METU where she studied international relations and European studies, before studying Acting at State Conservatory. Later, she was accepted to the Film and Drama program focusing on writing, directing and acting. Currently, she continues working as a script writer and actress.
Cemre Yilmaz: In 2016, she graduated from Ankara University Cinema Department, before returning to complete her Masters in which she’s writing her thesis about the post-cinema era. Currently, she is working as a freelance director and producer on several projects and continues to shoot promotional videos.
Chia-Hsuan Tan: is a Taiwanese filmmaker whose career has also developed around China and the US. Chia-Hsuan has a BA degree in Anthropology from National Taiwan University. This background in cultural and humanities studies has deeply affected her approach in filmmaking .She’s currently writing a story focusing on female basketball players in Asia, hoping to raise public interest in female athletes and their difficult situation.
Derya Durmaz: Her first short film Ziazan (2014) received 11 awards and full coverage in Washington Post and Monocle magazine. Her second short Mother Virgin No More (2015) premiered at the Berlinale Generations. She is a Berlinale Talents, Toronto TIFF Filmmaker Lab, First Films First and Film Independent Global Media Maker alumna. Her first feature film project won the Berlinale Talent Project Market Talent Highlight Award.
Hala El Kouch: is an international award-winning Lebanese film director and photographer. She is also a writer, editor, film teacher, and voice-over artist. She grew up in Nigeria, then moved to Lebanon for her studies in 2008. With a Masters in film directing, she specialized in cinematherapy. Her main motto in life is to make films with a cause for a cause.
Emna Mrabet: Raised in Tunisia, Emna Mrabet mad two short films; Paroles d’exilés (2008) and Absence (2010). A l’Aube de nos rêves (2019) is her latest documentary about post-revolutionary Tunisia. Her films have been featured in several festivals, including PCMMO, Rendez-vous de l’histoire de Blois, Festival du Cinéma Méditerranéen de Tétouan. With a PHD in cinema, she is also a university teacher, researcher, critic and the author of the book Le cinéma d’Abdellatif Kechiche: Prémisses et devenir (2016).
Işık: lives in Istanbul, Turkey. They graduated from Boğaziçi University, Department of Sociology, and will start a master’s degree in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design at Sabancı University. Işık is a nonbinary filmmaker whose areas of interest are family, gender, body, and violence. Their short documentary, Witness (2022), focuses on the emotions of women and LGBTIA+s within a student movement.
Marie-Rose Osta: is a Lebanese script writer and director. She graduated with a Master’s Degree in Filmmaking, from ALBA University in Beirut. She independently directed and produced many shorts films that traveled internationally to renowned festivals. Her latest short film Then Came Dark (2021) premiered at the 43rd Cairo International Film Festival and won The Special Jury Award in 2021. lMarie-Rose is currently developing her debut feature film.
Merve Bozcu: After completing her B.A. at Istanbul Technical University, she started the M.A. program in Cinema and Television at Kadir Has University. She directed a feature documentary, Her First (2018), about the challenges faced by women filmmakers in Turkey and a short movie, Plastic Dream (2021), about the pressure/effects of the beauty industry on women. She was selected by Sarajevo Talents 2022, Pack & Pitch Programme with her second fiction short focusing on domestic violence. She continues her works as a producer & director & writer.
J Triangular: is an Experimental Filmmaker, Multimedia Poet, and Spiritual Activist. Colombia Born, Taiwan Based. Their work reflects on queer spaces, mental health, identity and consciousness, and HIV activism. They see cinema as a social practice.
Safa Ghali: After getting her engineering degree in statistics and data analysis, she decided to pursue her dream and joined a cinematographic school. She directed 5 short movies and has participated in Tunisian festivals and abroad. In 2019, she got her Masters degree in writing and directing from ESAC. She is currently writing her Phd thesis in cinema.
Sana Jaziri: is a Tunisian director and scriptwriter who graduated with a doctorate in cinema from Pantheon University in Paris. She worked as a scriptwriter and script supervisor in France, Hong Kong and Morocco. Her short film The Wheelbarrow (2015) has won several awards.
Sheng Ting Shen: Born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, Sheng-Ting Shen is a director, editor, and producer currently living in New York. Sheng-Ting’s short film Bad News (2020) was selected and won over 15 international film festivals. Her latest short film, The Coolest Club (2022) is on its festival run.
Sis Gurdal: is an award-winning writer, director, and producer from Turkey. Sis studied International Politics and Film Studies at King’s College, London. Following her graduation, she worked on numerous short films and produced campaigns for brands including Prada, Zara and Vogue USA. Sis is a Tiff Every Story Fellow and an alumna of Cine Qua Non Lab, Doha Film Institute’s Hezayah Screenwriting Lab and TiFF Filmmaker Lab. Her short film, Postcards from The Orient (2020) screened at the BAFTA qualifying Aesthetica Film Festival and won multiple awards.
Yara Lahoud: journeys by storytelling through scriptwriting and film directing. She advocates for human rights, peace and women’s empowerment through her films and creative projects. Yara collaborated with production companies and national filmmakers on a variety of projects, including short films, documentaries, and series. She also works as a screenwriter for various platforms (youtube, short films, Instagram, websites). She was in charge of numerous health awareness sessions held in schools, initiatives, and workshops, for which she used her creative direction during the execution phase. Yara also devotes her time to learning opportunities and influential initiatives that promote peace through media and film.
RECLAIM THE FRAME x INTERNATIONAL is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects.
